Bangladesh has good potential for harnessing renewable energy sources such as solar, biomass, wind, and mini-hydropower. The country has been experiencing a gradual shift towards exploring renewable energy resources as a driving force for rural development. A few public sector and non-government organizations have started to develop renewable energy technology (RET) projects in rural areas. The lessons learnt from different demonstrations of RET projects reveal that with careful forward planning renewable energy can provide far-reaching economic, environmental, and social benefits to people living in remote rural areas in Bangladesh. This paper identifies some of the barriers that need to be overcome for the successful development of renewable energy technology sector and betterment of rural livelihoods. It does so through a critical review of policy and institutional settings, as well as present status and lessons learnt from pilot demonstration of a number of RET projects undertaken by different organizations. The study highlights policy implications of the review with the aim of supporting decision makers in formulating renewable energy policies and future plans for Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has a rural economy based on agriculture. Out of 130.1 million people, an estimated 77% of the population lives in rural areas (BBS, 2001). The rural majority uses mainly traditional energy sources—nearly 70% of total energy consumption comes from traditional biomass sources (Khan, 2003). People in rural areas do not have access to sufficient commercial energy and electricity, which is needed for economic growth. Per capita consumption of energy, which is a measure of the physical quality of life, is very low in Bangladesh. In 1997, it was only 8.83 GJ/person/year (Islam, 2001).
Furthermore, the gap between demand and supply is gradually increasing, as is the dependence on imported fuel oil. The rural population, which uses a fair amount of imported diesel and kerosene, is largely disadvantaged because of its low purchasing power (Sarkar et al., 2003). Also, efficiency of energy utilization is generally poor.
For lighting, many people in rural areas use kerosene based devices, many of which constitute serious fire hazards. Cooking is mainly done using unsustainable biomass fuels. Hence, biomass resources are being rapidly exhausted. Rural women and children are the primary collectors of wood and crop residues. Women cook three times a day on wood, crop residues, tea leaves, and dung and therefore have high exposures to indoor air pollution, which can cause acute infections, chronic lung diseases, low birth weight, cancer, and eye problems (Sarkar et al., 2003).
Grid-based rural electrification in Bangladesh is increasing. However, per capita generation of electricity is still very low at about 170 kWh/year in 2006 (Mondal and Denich, 2010). In 2006, still over 58% of the total population was not connected to the unreliable electricity grid (Jamaluddin, 2008). The reason is that it is not economical to extend grid access to lowly populated areas. Electricity supply to low-load rural and remote areas is characterized by high transmission and distribution losses, and heavily subsidized electricity pricing.
In 2005, the government of Bangladesh announced its ambitious goal to provide electricity for all by the year 2020 (PSMP, 2005). The government targets of electricity generation by renewable energy technologies (RETs) are 5% of the total power generation by 2015 and 10% by 2020 (REP, 2008). The use of solar, biomass, hydro, and wind energy technologies are planned to play a major part in meeting this target. Reaching these ambitious targets will be a major challenge. This paper aims to contribute to reaching these targets by identifying drivers and bottlenecks for implementation of RETs in rural Bangladesh and proposing implementation strategies.
Already since the 1970s, attempts have been made to implement RETs in rural areas of Bangladesh (REIN, 2010). In the last decade both public and private sectors have carried out a number of projects for promoting RETs in Bangladesh. Their experience entails valuable information that could support national policy makers in their on-going attempts at integrating RETs in the power sector of Bangladesh through national energy planning and policies. No integrated review of those experiences, however, exists so far.
This paper addresses this gap by providing an overview of the current state of implementation of those projects, analyzing their experiences through the theoretical lens of innovation systems and appropriate technology, identifying barriers and drivers to the successful implementation of RETs in rural areas in Bangladesh, and highlighting the policy implications and strategic directions for future work.
Since the vast majority of rural households have no access to modern energy and use of commercial fuel is limited, opportunities for use of RETs by rural households are potentially large. The relationship between energy access to rural areas and indicators for rural development is well established. Utilization of RETs is directly linked to social, economic, environment, and energy security issues like jobs, income level, and poverty, access to agricultural production, social services, health, climate change, and environmental quality. RET development and implementation is at an early stage in rural Bangladesh and there are a number of policy and institutional barriers that hinder this sector from being able to achieve reasonable progress. Implementation of RETs requires concrete strategies and mechanisms before getting any opportunity. RET projects from NGOs like Grameen Shakti and BRAC show very promising results. An important characteristic of these projects is that they take local circumstances, such as demand characteristics, available knowledge and skills, and financial circumstances, into consideration and put into place financial mechanisms, training programs, and income generation opportunities. Lack of such strategies and mechanisms, like in technology-push projects, has been shown to result in ineffective and unsustainable projects, and also in bad investment in RETs. Unless successful implementation strategies are implemented at a wider scale and policy and institutional barriers are removed, the abundant renewable energy sources will remain untapped. This will mean that opportunities for improved quality of life, reduced CO2 emissions, job creation, income generation, women empowerment, and a cleaner environment through increased use of RETs in rural Bangladesh will be missed.
